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Fish Stock

A fish stock flavored with salt, pepper, nutmeg, oysters, and served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Stock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Simmer fish stock for 30 minutes.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Add the oysters and their liquor.

  4. Place toasted bread in a tureen and pour the soup over it.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Add briny flavor and a tender, delicate texture to the soup.
Toasted bread
Absorbs the soup, adding body and a soft, hearty texture.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic note that rounds out the seasoning.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters. Oysters are delicate. Prolonged simmering toughens their flesh and dulls their flavor, so they should be added late and heated only briefly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, oyster, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, oyster, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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